Willa Cather had a secret.

She called it "the thing not named" and did her best to take the details to her grave when she died in 1947. 

Her last will and testament stated that her letters could not be published or quoted. Her loyal family upheld her wishes until 2011, when her nephew Charles died. After that, her literary property rights were turned over to a trust. 

The first 566 of her letters were published in 2013, and another 1,400 or so have been digitized for the online Cather archive at the University of Nebraska. Having this many of her letters available for the first time totally altered one historian's view of her life. 

"This is not the book I set out to write about Willa Cather," Betty Jean Steinshouer said, "but it's the book that the times demanded."

Betty Jean Steinshouer’s lifelong study to portray Willa Cather brought her to hundreds of Chautauqua stages throughout the US and Canada. She visited archives and rare book rooms to read the elusive Cather letters contained in files marked restricted.  

“I thought I knew Willa Cather,” she said. “But reading her letters to family and friends, to her publishers, even to strangers or near-strangers, brought something completely new into focus.”

You'll love this new and personal look at the world-famous author because it brings into focus the tremendous struggle it took for a confused little kid and a cross-dressing adolescent to become the one and only Willa Cather. 

Read by the Chautauqua scholar and actress who portrayed Cather onstage for many years. 

Special treat: The opening contains an excerpt of "Narcissus", the famous piano piece composed by Willa Cather's friend, Elthelbert Nevin, performed by Phillip Sear of Sussex, England.